Funds to snap up when shares fall

With some analysts warning that stock market returns could be negative next year, our correspondent suggests schemes to weather the storm

INVESTORS should brace themselves for a 10% fall in the UK stock market next year, Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, warned last week.

And fellow investment bank Morgan Stanley fears things could be even worse, with a one-in-three chance that the FTSE 100 could plunge more than 1,000 points to 5,350 - 18% lower than Friday's close of 6,555 - as the bull market finally ends.

The risk of a recession has heightened, with some economists warning there is now more than a 50% chance that growth will turn negative in the US, and some of Britain's best-known investors even talking of a recession here.

Neil Woodford of Invesco Perpetual, one of the managers tipped below, said last week: "There's a reasonably strong chance that we'll see the housing market, which has been a prop for the UK consumer - and by implication the economy - for so long, suffer. Undoubtedly, as we have